Bruce Naumann

Becoming commercially available in the mid 1960s, video quickly became integral to the intense experimentalism of New York City's music and art scenes. The medium was able to record image and sound at the same time, which allowed composers to visualize their music and artists to sound their images. But as well as creating unprecedented forms of audiovisuality, video work also producedinteractive spaces that questioned conventional habits of music and art consumption. This book explores the first decade of creative video work, focusing on the ways in which video technology was used to dissolve the boundaries between art and music.

In 1929 Nikolas Calas photographed himself in a mirror of a wardrobe, in a room in Tinos with a hand-held camera (ΕΛΙΑ L003.124). The camera is not visible at first sight, as Calas tries to ‘hide’ it, positioning it in front of his tie. This self- portrait is a manifestation of early self- portraying in photography and can be compared to other modernist self-portraits of the time, especially the ones, where the camera is not visible but somehow hidden in the shadow (for e.g. Lotte Jacobi, ‘Autoportrait’, 1937).
When examining Calas’ poetry and prose texts it is noticeable, that mirrors are a constant motive, as I will try to show. Especially interesting is the connection between mirrors and translation, for example in the correspondence with Williams Carlos Williams, regarding the translations of Calas’ french poems ‘Wrested from Mirrors’, ‘The Agony Among the Crowd’, ‘Narcissus in the Desert’ and ‘To Regain the Day Again’ into American. Williams is borrowing the metaphor of the mirror from Calas thematizing the translator as the other, as a reflection of the original. By analyzing the metaphor of the mirror it is possible as well to reconsider the use of the Pseudonyms of Nikolas Calamaris as a reflection of himself.
After this considerations I will end my talk with the portfolio of prints and objects by eleven artists (Vincenzo Agnetti, Arakawa, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Meret Oppenheim, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, James Rosenquist) introduced by Nikolas Calas and edited in 1975 with the title Mirros of the mind.

Since the mid-1960's, Bruce Nauman's abundant and complex body of work continues to address a fundamental notion in art: the nature of artistic experience. While Nauman's work is often labeled as conceptual, it carries a strong existentialist and deeply humanistic undercurrent, mapping a phenomenology of both artist and viewer from a dual perspective of spatial environment -as physical space and psychological entity -and of body, as a site of psycho-physical tension. As we shall see, in Nauman's work the boundaries between these two perspectives are never firmly established. They appear as a function of the interaction between artist, viewer and work -and embrace a number of philosophical tenets rooted in the notions of empathy and embodiment. In addition to exploring the sites of space and body, we will also consider Nauman's use of mirrors as an interface between them. We should mention a fourth perspective, central to Nauman's phenomenological mix: communication (in its verbal and textual forms), as a manifestation of the artist-viewer relationship. We will, however, focus primarily on the first two propositions of space and body, and their connector, the mirror.

Nel 1969 Robert Smitshon discute pubblicamente con Nancy Holt la sua attività: la conversazione è affidata a un video dal titolo East Coast West Coast.

Nell’alternare silenzi ironici o imbarazzati, ritrosia e ripetuti scuotimenti di testa, Smithson invoca più volte la propria non appartenenza al sistema dell’arte newyorkese (‘I don’t belong’) e espone il desiderio di poter lavorare semplicemente, ‘disteso sull’erba, guardando le nubi che passano’. Considera perplesso la parola ‘arte’, non si cura del ‘sistema’, celebra i costumi semplici e autenticamente ecologici degli indiani d’America (‘ohoh, ecco qui la nuova aristocrazia!’, ribatte argutamente Holt), esprime infine il proprio interesse per agricoltura biologica e pratiche alimentari salutiste.

Il video prova l’attenzione a quelle che Foucault avrebbe di lì a poco chiamato ‘biopolitiche’. Cibo e agricoltura organica rientrano per Smithson già a questa data tra le istanze autenticamente ‘ambientali’, assieme a architettura e urbanistica, informazione, lavoro – in breve: sfera pubblica.